The DNN community playing field
DNN has a long history of professionals working together to produce the best open source CMS and web application framework
possible. The DNN community.
I am part of this community for more than 10 years now and I love it.
I have made friends, worked together and learned a lot: about web development, about producing a real application for a large audience and more, much more. My real involvement came when one of the DNN core team members at that time (ErikVB) asked me to pick up the responsibility for the DNN Events module back in 2007. I used this module for a website of a sports organisation, found some bugs and fixed them. And in my intention to give something back to the community, I picked up that responsibility. ErikVB helped me to get started and luckily enough I found some people to help me with this, most notably Roger Selwyn, who contributed a lot to the Events module over the years.
And after all those years: I still love to work together with community members, and some of them I call real friends.
That can be your playing field as well
There are a lot of things that can be done in and for the DNN community.
Simple things (a design, some test work, a script edit, update a description on CodePlex, answer questions, validate an issue), community things (join a user group meeting, follow a hangout, talk about your experience), simple development stuff (fix a bug in module), less simple development stuff (add a feature to an existing open source module), welfare stuff (donate your module, tool or skin to the community by making it open source), and more.
How can you become a real community member? And enjoy the friendship that comes with it? Well, most simply stated: someone asks you to do something, you work together with others to get things done. It is as simple as that.
So now I ask you: will you join me and become a community member?
What's on the table?
I see several opportunities to give something back to the community:
Refresh DNN core modules: there is a long history of powerful modules that were distributed alongside
the DNN Platform, e.g. see the module
forum on DNNSoftware.com. A number of these modules can use some attention: update to DNN 7, check the lay-out, refresh
the form pattern. Simple straightforward development tasks, but with a lot of positive effect. Have a look at:
Announcements,
Events,
FAQ,
Feedback,
Gallery,
Help,
IFrame,
Links,
Media,
News Feeds,
Reports,
Survey,
XML and tell me if you like to contribute to any of these.
Replacement of the RadEditor: A lot of community members are not satisfied with the current HTML Editor that is supplied in DNN Platform (the Telerik RadEditor). Since the editor is replaceable, people have looked at the DNNCKEditor as a better alternative. The provider principle of DNN makes this possible, but that being said does not mean that it is implemented and ready for distribution int he next DNN version. We are looking for team members who can do some work in this area.
Make your module open source: make you module of skin or tool available on CodePlex or GitHub with a MIT license. That is how DNN started in the first place. Your module will become better if others can see it completely, make suggestions or even provide bug fixes. You do not know how to make it available on CodePlex or GitHub? No problem, we learned it the hard way and can help you to do it more easily.
Answer questions: be active in one of the forums on dnnsoftware.com on a topic you are interested in and know 1% more than the others: getting started, development issues, modules uses, administration, installation, languages pack, skin design, etc.
But there is without doubt more, that can and must be done. Feel free to make suggestions. Send a mail to [email protected] and we will be in touch.
You are in good company
Anyone stepping forward here can be part of a team, with existing experienced community members to work together with.
So I ask you again: will you join us and become a real community member?
